Today, when I went downtown it was rather worse for wear and broken. It's all very disheartening.
On Sunday I fly back to London.
I really have to make this emigration business work, because there is nothing to come back to.
Friday, 21 October 2011
Athens under fire
Yesterday central Athens turned into a battlefield.
Today, when I went downtown it was rather worse for wear and broken. It's all very disheartening.
On Sunday I fly back to London.
I really have to make this emigration business work, because there is nothing to come back to.
Today, when I went downtown it was rather worse for wear and broken. It's all very disheartening.
On Sunday I fly back to London.
I really have to make this emigration business work, because there is nothing to come back to.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
In Athens.
*sigh* I'm Athens and getting stuff done and seeing people. But I'm feeling restless, dissatisfied and unhappy. Things are really bad and most of my friends are either stoically plodding forward or quietly panicking.
And I'm in a very un-talkative mood. So here are some videos instead from yesterday.
(And it case you were wondering, yes there is a rubbish collectors strike on and the roads of Athens are sinking under the rubbish piles.)
This next one is old, but you get to see the swanky Suntagma metro station:
And for those of you who might be missing the Athens Riot Dog:
And I'm in a very un-talkative mood. So here are some videos instead from yesterday.
(And it case you were wondering, yes there is a rubbish collectors strike on and the roads of Athens are sinking under the rubbish piles.)
This next one is old, but you get to see the swanky Suntagma metro station:
And for those of you who might be missing the Athens Riot Dog:
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Children of the Riots
A very interesting documentary about the 2008 and 2011 riots in Athens.
*sigh* It makes me homesick. Truth is, even though Athens is a provincial city in the larger scheme of things, things had slowly started happening. I was starting to feel okay with compromising and staying in Greece. I had organised a life, with an apartment, and a neighbourhood and things I did and stuff.
Until we went bankrupt and things went to total shit.
Now I need to get a job in London and manage to save money, so that when the economy finally gets better, I can return with a bit of capital and hopefully open up my own practice. If I didn't have deluded dreams I would have offed myself ages ago.
Don't worry, the documentary is in english
*sigh* It makes me homesick. Truth is, even though Athens is a provincial city in the larger scheme of things, things had slowly started happening. I was starting to feel okay with compromising and staying in Greece. I had organised a life, with an apartment, and a neighbourhood and things I did and stuff.
Until we went bankrupt and things went to total shit.
Now I need to get a job in London and manage to save money, so that when the economy finally gets better, I can return with a bit of capital and hopefully open up my own practice. If I didn't have deluded dreams I would have offed myself ages ago.
Don't worry, the documentary is in english
The Hunger Games - what I thought
I had heard lots of gushing over The Hunger Games by various people. Mostly over here on LJ, I must confess. So I thought that now that I have a library card I might as well find the book and see if it's all that. They didn't have it in Enfield. (Do they have anything in Enfield?) But I could order it to be brought over from another library, which I did. And it came a couple of days before I was to fly to Athens.
I started reading the book as soon as I boarded the tube to Heathrow at 5.15 in the morning and finished it ten minutes before we landed in Athens airport. Yup, it was gripping. But also I am a bit of a compulsive reader and usually read a book right through.
SPOILERS AHOY!!!!
*****
*
*
*
First thing I feel I must say, is that with an ominous title like Hunger Games, I would have never picked up the book if I hadn't heard so many people gush about how great it is. There is a reason I have never seen Battle Royal or read The Lord of the Flies a second time. Stories about children killing each other really turn me off.
I begun reading the book with the crazy hope that despite the title and all the foreshadowing in the first chapter, the book would end up NOT being about what I was afraid it would be. When I was disappointed, I almost put the book down. I really, really do NOT like reading about children killing each other, or being killed.
But I am a sucker for alternative realities and post-apocalyptic dystopian worlds. And I thoroughly enjoyed that part of the book. A couple of chapters in, I begun routing for the story to turn into the beginning of a revolution. I really could have got behind that... But damn it, I was reading a teenager's book - it was kind of obvious - and not an adult one. Does YA fiction deal with revolutions, I wonder...
Katniss is a very good heroine for a YA book. (Kudos for having a female heroine in an adventure story.) A little bit of an annoying bit of a heroine for an adult to read about though. She was far too strong and abrasive and certain and self-centered for me to be able to identify with her and properly like her. On the other hand, that is kind of how sixteen year olds are. I'm just too old and can no longer easily identify with teenagers.
I really liked what little we saw of Gale. And I certainly liked Peeta, there seemed to be more dimensions to his character than there were to Katniss's. Why, I wonder? Sometimes the hero/ heroine does end up a bit more simplistic and two-dimensional than the secondary characters. This is not the first time I've noticed this in a book. On the other hand, the fact Peeta was more complex as a character, made him perhaps a little less persuasive as a teenager? I'm definitely over-thinking this!
The actual Games, were gripping - even though at some point I did get a little bored, that sort of action bores me a bit. I kept on hoping something would happen, and they wouldn't actually go through with the games. Seriously, every time another kid died it annoyed the hell out of me. I especially was annoyed by the way we were supposed to be routing for the death of certain characters. *Sigh* I will not stop harping on about how a nice little revolution would have improved the book vastly.
I called almost all of the plot twists - I have been reading books / watching films too long to be surprised by such basic plot twists. The only one that really took me by surprise - so much that I really don't know what to make of it - were the zombie-werewolfs. I'm not sure if it was brilliantly nightmarish, or just a bit too much over-the-top. The plot "twist" I emphatically didn't like was the open-ended possible love triangle. Bleurgh! Have a mentioned how much love triangles bore me?
Anyway. It was a good and interesting book, and at some point I did tear up. And I was left curious enough to seriously consider trying to order the second book from my library when I get back.
So, who else has read the book? Anyone want to talk about it? It did give me a number of vague thinky thoughts.
I started reading the book as soon as I boarded the tube to Heathrow at 5.15 in the morning and finished it ten minutes before we landed in Athens airport. Yup, it was gripping. But also I am a bit of a compulsive reader and usually read a book right through.
SPOILERS AHOY!!!!
*****
*
*
*
First thing I feel I must say, is that with an ominous title like Hunger Games, I would have never picked up the book if I hadn't heard so many people gush about how great it is. There is a reason I have never seen Battle Royal or read The Lord of the Flies a second time. Stories about children killing each other really turn me off.
I begun reading the book with the crazy hope that despite the title and all the foreshadowing in the first chapter, the book would end up NOT being about what I was afraid it would be. When I was disappointed, I almost put the book down. I really, really do NOT like reading about children killing each other, or being killed.
But I am a sucker for alternative realities and post-apocalyptic dystopian worlds. And I thoroughly enjoyed that part of the book. A couple of chapters in, I begun routing for the story to turn into the beginning of a revolution. I really could have got behind that... But damn it, I was reading a teenager's book - it was kind of obvious - and not an adult one. Does YA fiction deal with revolutions, I wonder...
Katniss is a very good heroine for a YA book. (Kudos for having a female heroine in an adventure story.) A little bit of an annoying bit of a heroine for an adult to read about though. She was far too strong and abrasive and certain and self-centered for me to be able to identify with her and properly like her. On the other hand, that is kind of how sixteen year olds are. I'm just too old and can no longer easily identify with teenagers.
I really liked what little we saw of Gale. And I certainly liked Peeta, there seemed to be more dimensions to his character than there were to Katniss's. Why, I wonder? Sometimes the hero/ heroine does end up a bit more simplistic and two-dimensional than the secondary characters. This is not the first time I've noticed this in a book. On the other hand, the fact Peeta was more complex as a character, made him perhaps a little less persuasive as a teenager? I'm definitely over-thinking this!
The actual Games, were gripping - even though at some point I did get a little bored, that sort of action bores me a bit. I kept on hoping something would happen, and they wouldn't actually go through with the games. Seriously, every time another kid died it annoyed the hell out of me. I especially was annoyed by the way we were supposed to be routing for the death of certain characters. *Sigh* I will not stop harping on about how a nice little revolution would have improved the book vastly.
I called almost all of the plot twists - I have been reading books / watching films too long to be surprised by such basic plot twists. The only one that really took me by surprise - so much that I really don't know what to make of it - were the zombie-werewolfs. I'm not sure if it was brilliantly nightmarish, or just a bit too much over-the-top. The plot "twist" I emphatically didn't like was the open-ended possible love triangle. Bleurgh! Have a mentioned how much love triangles bore me?
Anyway. It was a good and interesting book, and at some point I did tear up. And I was left curious enough to seriously consider trying to order the second book from my library when I get back.
So, who else has read the book? Anyone want to talk about it? It did give me a number of vague thinky thoughts.
Flying and Reading
I did two things yesterday. I flew to Athens for a short visit home, and I read Suzanne Collins 'The Hunger Games".
The flight wasn't bad. I was stressed about managing to reach the airport in time, because it was an early morning flight and I live on the exact opposite side of London from Heathrow. I took the Piccadilly line right from one end of the line to the other. It took about one and a half hours.
Once there things I dropped my bags really fast - I had checked in online to save time - and rushed to the security check. As usual I forgot about the liquid thing and ended up downing a whole (small) bottle of water before going through - it's a pity to throw away water when you've carted all the way from home!
Security check was the usual bleurgh. I was forced to take of my boots - even though they had obviously thin rubber soles- , and my cardigan, - even though obviously a cardigan isn't a coat. I made the BIG mistake of forgetting to take off my badge which set the alarm off as I passed through the door. So ended up being THOROUGHLY frisked - first by hand and then by hand held bleepy machine. The machine thingy bleeped when she passed it near my bust - it seems like the under-wiring of a bra is enough to set it off.
I was far too tired to enjoy the airport shops - I hadn't slept the night before - so I took the shuttle to my boarding gate practically immediately. Well, I did try buying my father a box of cigarettes first, but was summarily informed that only people travelling outside the EU can buy cigarettes at the airport. (What?)
Once I was finally chilling in the waiting area, I tried doing a bit of net surfing only to realise that Heathrow airport doesn't have free wi-fi! WTF!?! Athens airport has free wifi (granted only one hour), but they are so cheap in Heathrow they make you pay? That got me very annoyed. So I decided I better forget updating LJ and twitter and return to my book instead.
I returned to Athens for a number of reasons, and I have made myself a nice big list of things to do:
1. See family and friends.
2. Get my return of taxes, because I'm broke and need all the money I can scrounge up. (Done! Did it this morning.)
3. Bring back summer clothes and take winter clothes back to London.
4. Visit dentist for my tri-annual cleaning, because dentists in the UK are far too expensive. (Booked appointment for tomorrow.)
5. Get haircut (because hairdressers are far too expensive in UK. And anyway my mother offered to pay for me to go to her hairdresser.)
6. Visit my beautician for electrolysis/photolysis (because, yes, even that is cheaper in Greece.)
7. Buy stuff I can't seem to find in London (argyle clay for face-masks, my organic hair-dye, some cheap but good olive oil soap, my Apivita facial cleanser, some scraps of fabric - they sell left over scraps here really cheap if you know where to go)
8. Print some business cards - because I know good value shops to go to for that in Athens, but haven't a clue where to go in London.
9. Photograph some of the buildings in Athens I worked on for my portfolio.
10. Try to find where I put my old architecture sketches from university.
11. See if I can get the glasses I broke fixed - no one would do in London where I asked.
And well, that's all I can remember now. But I'm sure to add more to that list soon enough.
You know, this post ended up so huge, I'll make another one later with my thoughts about the Hunger Games.
I've got to cook anyway.
The flight wasn't bad. I was stressed about managing to reach the airport in time, because it was an early morning flight and I live on the exact opposite side of London from Heathrow. I took the Piccadilly line right from one end of the line to the other. It took about one and a half hours.
Once there things I dropped my bags really fast - I had checked in online to save time - and rushed to the security check. As usual I forgot about the liquid thing and ended up downing a whole (small) bottle of water before going through - it's a pity to throw away water when you've carted all the way from home!
Security check was the usual bleurgh. I was forced to take of my boots - even though they had obviously thin rubber soles- , and my cardigan, - even though obviously a cardigan isn't a coat. I made the BIG mistake of forgetting to take off my badge which set the alarm off as I passed through the door. So ended up being THOROUGHLY frisked - first by hand and then by hand held bleepy machine. The machine thingy bleeped when she passed it near my bust - it seems like the under-wiring of a bra is enough to set it off.
I was far too tired to enjoy the airport shops - I hadn't slept the night before - so I took the shuttle to my boarding gate practically immediately. Well, I did try buying my father a box of cigarettes first, but was summarily informed that only people travelling outside the EU can buy cigarettes at the airport. (What?)
Once I was finally chilling in the waiting area, I tried doing a bit of net surfing only to realise that Heathrow airport doesn't have free wi-fi! WTF!?! Athens airport has free wifi (granted only one hour), but they are so cheap in Heathrow they make you pay? That got me very annoyed. So I decided I better forget updating LJ and twitter and return to my book instead.
I returned to Athens for a number of reasons, and I have made myself a nice big list of things to do:
1. See family and friends.
2. Get my return of taxes, because I'm broke and need all the money I can scrounge up. (Done! Did it this morning.)
3. Bring back summer clothes and take winter clothes back to London.
4. Visit dentist for my tri-annual cleaning, because dentists in the UK are far too expensive. (Booked appointment for tomorrow.)
5. Get haircut (because hairdressers are far too expensive in UK. And anyway my mother offered to pay for me to go to her hairdresser.)
6. Visit my beautician for electrolysis/photolysis (because, yes, even that is cheaper in Greece.)
7. Buy stuff I can't seem to find in London (argyle clay for face-masks, my organic hair-dye, some cheap but good olive oil soap, my Apivita facial cleanser, some scraps of fabric - they sell left over scraps here really cheap if you know where to go)
8. Print some business cards - because I know good value shops to go to for that in Athens, but haven't a clue where to go in London.
9. Photograph some of the buildings in Athens I worked on for my portfolio.
10. Try to find where I put my old architecture sketches from university.
11. See if I can get the glasses I broke fixed - no one would do in London where I asked.
And well, that's all I can remember now. But I'm sure to add more to that list soon enough.
You know, this post ended up so huge, I'll make another one later with my thoughts about the Hunger Games.
I've got to cook anyway.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
R.I.P.
Steve Jobs was deifinitely a great man and Apple Macintosh is one of the twentieth century's most seminal companies.
But it was Bert Jansch's death that stung the most for me. Maybe because I was still holding out hope to see him live one day?
But it was Bert Jansch's death that stung the most for me. Maybe because I was still holding out hope to see him live one day?
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Last days of summer
I'm feeling hopelessly lazy lately, hence the lack of updates.
Also, like the sheep I am, I made myself a twitter account. Twitter is proving rather addictive. Hmf, I get addicted far too easily.
My news?
On Thursday I met in London! Katelin is just as adorable in RL! We had lots of fun talking in real time (yay for meeting people face to face!) and discussing fandom loudly in public. We meandered around Regent's park and then walked along the Embankment. Two of my favourite places in London! It was a gorgeous day, which we ended with a nice thin crust pizza (hawaian, because I was feeling adventurous) and a final stroll to Saint Paul's in the moonlight.
I hope you had lots of fun in London,! *squishes you close and wishes you didn't have to leave!*
Otherwise I have been visiting parks with Dimitris to take advantage of this last burst of good weather. Enfield is just full of parks! Today we went to Hilly Fields, where we lazed in the sun, had a pick nick and ogled all the hyper young 'uns surrounding us. Then we moved our lazy arses and went for a walk, discovering a huge cemetery which we promptly got lost in.
Look at me becoming all tech savvy and managing to embed a slideshow!
Also, like the sheep I am, I made myself a twitter account. Twitter is proving rather addictive. Hmf, I get addicted far too easily.
My news?
On Thursday I met
I hope you had lots of fun in London,
Otherwise I have been visiting parks with Dimitris to take advantage of this last burst of good weather. Enfield is just full of parks! Today we went to Hilly Fields, where we lazed in the sun, had a pick nick and ogled all the hyper young 'uns surrounding us. Then we moved our lazy arses and went for a walk, discovering a huge cemetery which we promptly got lost in.
Look at me becoming all tech savvy and managing to embed a slideshow!
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